Sarvam Secures Five-Year MoD Pact to Build Sovereign AI for Tri-Services

Forging an Indigenous Neural Spine for the Armed Forces

The Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff has formalized a strategic five-year memorandum of understanding with Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence firm Sarvam, establishing an umbrella framework to embed sovereign machine-learning capabilities across the Indian Army, Navy, and Air Force. Announced publicly by the Ministry of Defence, the pact tasks the unicorn startup with designing, developing, and deploying advanced AI applications tailored for operational execution, tactical training, and high-level strategic decision-support. By unifying the technological backbone across India's tri-services, the framework bridges the operational silos that historically complicated joint planning and cross-domain data interoperability.

This institutional alignment arrives at a critical juncture for Indian military modernization, where asymmetric grey-zone tactics and hypersonic reaction timelines demand sub-second data processing. Under the terms of the agreement, all three services and their associated joint organizations will gain access to standardized foundation models, agentic infrastructure, and geospatial perception systems. This unified digital ecosystem ensures that operational lessons and tactical doctrines learned by one service dynamically feed into the algorithmic development of the others, creating a cumulative feedback loop that exponentially accelerates operational readiness.

"The deployment of sovereign, air-gapped foundation models across the tri-services fundamentally transforms how India processes tactical intelligence, compressing decision cycles while cementing strategic autonomy."

Compressing the Sensor-to-Shooter Loop via Chanakya

Execution of classified military contracts will be channeled entirely through Chanakya, Sarvam's dedicated, firewalled national security division specifically established to handle sensitive defence requirements. Built to operate within isolated, air-gapped networks completely severed from the public internet, Chanakya ensures that operational data remains strictly bound to sovereign hardware infrastructure. The division utilizes Sarvam's advanced AI stack, anchored by the Sarvam 105B foundation model, which was open-sourced following the company's selection under the national IndiaAI Mission.

The underlying architecture employs a sophisticated Mixture-of-Experts design where only 10.3 billion of its 105 billion parameters activate dynamically during inference, optimizing computational efficiency without sacrificing analytical depth. This capacity for multimodal data ingestion and complex agentic workflows directly targets the sensor-to-shooter loop, fusing disparate intelligence streams from radar arrays, electronic warfare pods, and frontline surveillance feeds. By accelerating target acquisition and threat identification, the system provides commanders with actionable intelligence while strictly preserving mandatory human oversight for all lethal engagement decisions.

Scaling From Institutional Prototypes to Theatre-Wide Integration

The newly minted MoU builds directly upon verified field deployments within elite military educational and strategic institutions. Earlier, the Defence Services Staff College in Wellington launched DRONA 2.0—a specialized generative AI platform built on Sarvam foundation models designed to optimize strategic studies, research, and resource allocation. Following rigorous security audits and certification by both HQ IDS and the Defence Cyber Agency, the system proved the operational viability of running heavy neural networks on secure, on-premise military GPU servers.

By scaling this success from a single staff college to an enterprise-wide tri-service framework, the Ministry of Defence is systematically addressing the technological vulnerabilities associated with reliance on foreign commercial software. With a post-money valuation of $1.5 billion backed by strategic investments from domestic giants like HCLTech and global heavyweights such as Nvidia, Sarvam possesses the balance sheet required to sustain long-term defence research. This institutional partnership exemplifies the broader pivot toward 'Atmanirbharta', ensuring that India's military advantage in the digital age is engineered, deployed, and controlled entirely within sovereign borders.